It Happened in Rome
by Slightly Obsessed
Summary: COMPLETE! Lizzie promised Gordo adventures in Rome, then had one without him. But what if that never really happened, and it was Gordo who actually had the adventure? An adventure that did not include Lizzie. . .
1. Chapter 1

_My last couple of stories were a little intense. For this one, the pace slows down somewhat, but the sweetness is still there, I hope._

_I was discussing the Lizzie McGuire movie with Dr. Strange (Miranda's World), and he is of the opinion that the whole thing never happened, it was just Lizzie's dream. So that got me asking the question, "If the events portrayed in the movie never happened...then what really DID happen in Rome?" And of course me, being such a Gordo fanatic, I decided to give him the adventure, instead of Lizzie._

_This story will be five chapters long. Four are already written, and I feel extremely confident about the last. I haven't left you in a lurch yet, so please feel free to R&E (Read and Enjoy), confident that the story will have a satisfactory conclusion._

_By the way, not certain if I will be writing any more Curious stories. I never meant for them to go as far as they already have. But if the mood strikes, anything is possible._

_Also, just in case anyone ever wants to e-mail me, know that I delete any mail I cannot immediately identify, so please use Lizzie, Gordo, fanfiction or some such identifying word in the subject line, or I will never even know you made an attempt to say hello! _

_--_

_-_

_- _

My name is David Gordon. But I'm not the real David Gordon.

If you want the real David Gordon, you need to look at the old man sitting across from me at this tiny gelato shop in the heart of Rome. The old man with wrinkles all over his face, especially around the corners of his eyes. Laugh lines, they call them. And he does laugh a lot. And there's still a sparkle in those bright blue eyes. And of course he's got a full head of curly hair. That hair has been silver-gray for as many years as I can remember, not dark brown like it used to be. Like I've seen in pictures.

Like mine is now.

That old man is my grandpa, the real David Gordon. He chides me all the time for saying that he is the _real_ David Gordon, thus implying that I'm not. He tells me I need to believe in myself. And I do. But I'm only sixteen, I've barely lived. Hell, except for Brittany Novak, who doesn't really count, I haven't even kissed a girl yet!

But the real David Gordon has kissed plenty of girls. Back in the day, the real David Gordon was in all the tabloid magazines, the famed movie director always dating one starlet or another. He's been married four times.

"Not failed marriages," he's often told me with a wink. "Learning experiences. _Practice_." And then he would smile and tell me he finally got it right when he met my grandma. A year later they had my dad, and then my mom and dad had me, and that's how I got to be David Gordon. The Third.

All in all, not a bad place to be.

And Italy is not a bad place to be, either. We're touring Europe all summer. It's a big family thing, including everyone from Grandpa Gordo right down to Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bobby's little baby boy who is just now being potty trained. (_That's _been a lot of fun!) My cousins Amy and Katie are here also. I used to like to hang out with them, but lately they've been so boy-crazy it gets really annoying to listen to them chatter all day long about a bunch of nonsense.

So I've been hanging out with Grandpa Gordo quite a lot. He's always got such good stories to tell, and being here in Europe really seems to have opened up the floodgates of his memories. For several years, he worked with Three Mills Studios in London, so when we visited England last week he told me a lot of interesting stories about his time there.

But I'm not going to tell you those stories. Because the story I want to tell you is the story he's just finished telling me, sitting here outside this gelateria in the heart of Rome.

I want to tell you this story because it's the kind of story that generally doesn't get told in my family, and Grandpa Gordo has just totally blown me away by opening up with so many details about something incredible that happened to him when he was just about my age, almost sixty years ago.

I don't know how good his memory is, if he's making some of this stuff up or not. He is a pretty good storyteller, some of his books have been made into movies and all, so maybe this is just another crazy tale out of his imagination. But I tend to think not. I mean, he actually got tears in the corners of his eyes at one point, tears falling down the crevices of the laugh lines around his eyes. I think this must have really happened to him. You listen. You decide.

-

It started when Grandpa Gordo and I sat down at a small table outside this gelateria off a main street in the oldest section of Rome. We had been walking all morning, taking in the sights, enjoying the atmosphere, but now we needed a rest. Well, he needed a rest. He's still pretty spry considering he's 74, but it had been a long morning and even I was glad for the chance to sit down.

Grandpa Gordo handed me twenty lire and told me to bring him a _caffé freddo_ and get myself whatever I wanted. I ordered a cherry gelato, and brought him back his iced coffee and some change. He smiled as he put the coins in his pocket of his baggy pants. It was a sad smile, a wistful smile. All morning I could tell he was thinking of something, and I felt like maybe I was about to get another story.

Sure enough, Grandpa Gordo sighed and pointed at the hotel directly across the street.

"You see that hotel, Dave?" he asked. "I stayed at that hotel once."

"Really?"

He nodded. "Yep. Sure did. Long time ago. I was about your age, I suppose. I was…well, I was fourteen. Just barely fourteen."

I laughed. "What were you doing in Italy at fourteen?" I wondered. "I never knew your parents liked to travel."

"Oh, they didn't. It wasn't with my parents. It was with my school. It was the summer before high school and this girl I knew had talked me into going on this class trip to Italy for a week."

I laughed again. "You must have liked this girl pretty much to get talked into something that big."

"Oh, I did," Grandpa Gordo confirmed. "I liked her a whole lot. Lizzie McGuire was her name. I've told you about her before. She was the cutest girl you could ever imagine, Dave. Long blonde hair, bright hazel eyes, and these big pouty lips…"

He was doing it again. Wandering. Lost in his memories.

"So…" I said slowly, bringing him back. "What happened? Did you come to Rome and have a romantic interlude with the girl of your dreams?"

Grandpa Gordo looked at me and smiled. "I did, Dave. I surely did. But it wasn't with Lizzie McGuire."

Now I was intrigued. "Then who?" I asked.

He sat back, sipping his _caffé freddo_. For a long time he didn't answer, and I assumed he was running the story through his mind, framing his words, so I waited. At last, though, he said, "How old are you again?"

"Sixteen."

"Well then. I guess you're old enough to hear this."

"Hear what?" I asked, now unbearably curious.

"A story…I haven't told in many, many years. Your grandma knows. I can't recall now if I ever told your dad. I haven't told too many people, actually."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Well, it's just not the kind of thing you run around telling everyone you meet. But you're my pal, right? And you're an adult. Well, almost. And I think I'd like to tell you…what it was like…."

He was doing it again! Wandering. But this time I waited patiently, because something told me this was going to be a good story. He stared at the hotel across the street. He sipped his coffee. He pulled another ten lire out of the pocket of his baggy pants and said, "Get me another, Davey, and something more for yourself, if you want. We're going to be here a long time."


	2. Chapter 2

_Well, Chapter 5 is really going to be Chapter 5 AND Chapter 6. As usual, my story is running longer than I originally planned. _

_Glad to see everyone is latching on to the idea of Gordo as an old man. Can't you just see him? And I like the grandson too. I really thought this was the best way to tell this story, because it's going to be a little hazy around the edges, full of impressions that have been seasoned by so many years. I think it is that seasoning that will make this extra sweet. At least I hope so._

-

-

"Well, the first thing you need to know," Grandpa Gordo began, starting on his second _caffé freddo_, "is that I was absolutely nuts over this Lizzie McGuire, but I was way too shy to do anything about it. Girls were a mystery to me. But I believed in myself about everything else. My school grades were outstanding. I was making little films with my video camera all the time, and some of them were pretty good. I knew without a doubt that I would go to college, become a director, be famous and respected. I had that much confidence, even back then. I didn't even mind so much how short I was. I'd come to terms with that, and with being picked last for team sports. Have you come to terms with that, Dave?"

"Sort of," I said, not really wanting to talk about it. "What about Lizzie McGuire?"

"Ah, yes!" he sighed. "Lizzie McGuire. We'd been friends so long, I couldn't even think of a time when I didn't know her. She was so much a part of my life. Sort of like you and that Brittany girl."

I made a face. "I don't want to talk about Brittany, Grandpa. Tell me about Lizzie McGuire. How she talked you into going on this trip."

"Well, she really didn't have to twist my arm, you know. Our other friend Miranda was going to be away in Mexico for the summer, and when it came time to sign up for this trip, Lizzie said, 'Oh, Gordo! Let's go. We'll have such adventures together! Just you and me!'"

Grandpa Gordo stopped and smiled. "' Just you and me.' In a romantic city like Rome. How could I resist? I told my parents, and they thought it was an excellent 'educational opportunity.' My parents were always very big on education. So they coughed up the money, which was no problem, and we were on a plane on our way to Rome.

"Just me and Lizzie. And a bunch of other classmates, of course. And the new high school principal as our chaperone, an awful manly woman, I think her name was Unger…something. Unger…haus? Ungerbert? Ungerman? It doesn't matter. She decided from the get-go that she did not like me. Caused me some trouble later on in my high school career, but that's another story. For the moment, just know it was me and Lizzie, on a plane, sitting next to each other, sleeping next to each other, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. I was in heaven. Dave, I'm telling you. It was heaven."

Here Grandpa Gordo stopped again and sighed. Then he went on. "There was this awful girl in our group, her name was Kate something. Kate Sands or Sanders. When we were children, she used to be friends with Lizzie and Miranda and me, but once we got into middle school---do they still call it middle school?"

"High Prep they call it now," I informed.

"Ah! Yes, I've heard that. Prep used to mean something totally different in my day," Grandpa Gordo said. "Anyway, this Kate became a cheerleader, and once that happened, she didn't want anything to do with us anymore. She was a snob. But a looker. Tall. Blonde. And legs that didn't stop. And she had it up here---"

"Grandpa!" I exclaimed in shock.

He laughed. "You know what I'm talking about, Dave. Don't think I haven't seen you checking out some of these Italian babes walking along the street. These Italian women, they're built, aren't they? Not like when we visited---"

"Grandpa," I said gently, "you're getting off-track. Tell me about Kate."

"Oh, that's right! Anyway, you see, she came over to us on the plane and somehow she had this magazine, this tabloid, and it was all in Italian, so none of us knew what it was about, but she had gotten the flight attendant to translate a little, and it seems there was this pop duo---you know, these singers, they were called Paulo and Isabella, these two attractive looking young people who were apparently very popular in Italy at the time, and somehow Kate got the idea into her head that this Isabella looked exactly like Lizzie, only with dark hair.

"So she showed us the pictures in the magazine, and yes, she did kind of look like Lizzie, but it was no big deal. A lot of people look like other people, if you dress them up right. But Kate thought it was amazing, and she kept going on and on about how fabulous this was, that Lizzie could be this international singing star, and that when we all got to Italy we ought to try to find Paulo and Isabella, and show them, and maybe Lizzie could get a job as a stand-in, and travel around with them all over the world on their tours."

By this time I was laughing, and Grandpa Gordo laughed with me. "That's the kind of person Kate was," he explained. "To her, if you couldn't be an international singing sensation, the next best thing was to look like one. So after that, Kate would not leave Lizzie alone. She sat there for at least an hour, planting all these ideas in Lizzie's head, until finally the Ungermeister told her to get back in her seat.

"But then something strange happened. Because we still had several hours left on the flight, and Lizzie took another nap, and when she woke up she started telling everyone about a dream she had. In this dream, Paulo, the singing star, saw her on the streets of Rome, and asked her if she would stand in for Isabella, with whom he was quarreling at the moment. Then everybody thought she was Isabella. Then she performed a song at some show. And everybody loved her."

Now I was really laughing. "I know some girls who have dreams like that all the time!"

"No, wait!" Grandpa Gordo said. "It sounds funny, but it's really not. I mean, it is funny in a way, but what happened next is really sad. For me, I mean. Because once Kate heard about Lizzie's dream, she said, 'It's a sign! We have _got_ to find Paulo and Isabella.' And from that moment on Kate was Lizzie's new best friend. She sunk in her claws and would not let go.

"They ended up sharing a hotel room together, and I can only imagine the kind of brainwashing Kate inflicted upon her in the wee hours of the morning. Lizzie got so wrapped up in all this. I also think she must have thought it was nice to have Kate back as a friend. And Lizzie had always been a little starstruck herself, so I imagine she was really enjoying the possibility of brushing up against the famous.

"But you know where that put me. On the back burner. Poor Gordo. Poor old understanding Gordo. Loyal friend to the end. With girls, just like in basketball, hanging around, waiting to be chosen. Waiting for…for something that now looked like it was never going to happen at all."

"Grandpa…" I commiserated.

"Yep," he said, nodding. "No adventures this time around for Gordo and Lizzie. Gordo gets zip, zilch, nada. The big goose egg."

"But…but…" I reasoned, trying to make him feel better about something that had happened sixty years ago. "This Lizzie, I'm sure she wasn't the only fish in the sea, as they say. I'm sure there were other girls."

"At home, well...there were a few. Most of them so awful, I don't even want to think about them. Some McKenzie girl…" He shivered involuntarily. "But anyway, we weren't at home. And my only true friend on this trip was Lizzie. She wanted me to go with her and Kate and this other boy Ethan and sneak out in the evenings, traipsing all over Rome, looking for Paulo and Isabella, but I said no, I wasn't going to do that. I had no interest in Paulo and Isabella, I thought the whole thing was stupid. So my plan was to stay in the hotel each night and read."

"Grandpa…"

"But that first evening, before it got dark, it was so pleasant outside, I decided I would go out in back of the hotel, into this garden area and just hang out there a little while. It was full of winding paths of roses and stone benches here and there, and fountains. It was very beautiful, actually. I wonder if it's still there, like that. When we're done, we'll go over and take a look, okay?"

I nodded, watching him intently as I saw the laugh lines once again creasing up with a new smile.

"That garden was so beautiful," he said wistfully. "I didn't know it then, of course, I was only a fourteen year old boy, what did I know about beauty? But something drew me out there, the peacefulness, the serenity of it all. I recognized immediately that this was somewhere I could go and feel relaxed and just think about everything.

"Just think about Lizzie, and what the hell good was I doing myself being so obsessed with this girl who more or less considered me a piece of furniture in her life, a footstool, convenient when needed, but otherwise tossed to the side. Oh, I don't know if it was really like that. But that was how I felt at the moment. It's been sixty years, Dave, and I still remember how I felt sitting in that garden, thinking about Lizzie."

Suddenly I realized this story was going to be a lot more involved and complicated than anything else he had told me so far. I'd never considered the possibility that Grandpa Gordo could be so in love with anyone other than Grandma. I wanted to ask him what ever happened to this Lizzie McGuire, but before I could get a word out of my mouth, he spoke again.

"And there…" he revealed, "there, in that beautiful garden…that was where I met Gina."


	3. Chapter 3

_Happy Thanksgiving! Here's another chapter to amuse you while you are resting your bellies after the turkey feast. _

_Anyone who might know, tell me if I am getting across Gina's accent properly. It's difficult to write accents. I hope you can hear her, and I hope you can see her!_

_By the way, as I continue to write this story, it has just gone now from five chapters, to six, to at latest count: seven. I don't think it will be more than seven, but I love details, so I'm including as many as possible. Hope you're enjoying the details!_

_-_

-

I was just beginning to get used to the idea of Grandpa Gordo as a fourteen year old boy totally infatuated with his best friend Lizzie McGuire, and now he was introducing another girl. Gina. And there was something about the way he said her name that told me that this story was about to get hot.

"Gina…" he repeated in a far off voice, and for a moment he did not continue, lost in some memory.

"Gina…"

I waited. I knew better than to rush him. We were on vacation, we had all day. Grandpa Gordo was old, but not so old that he could not still appreciate the memory of some girl named Gina. I saw him smiling.

"I don't know her last name," he went on. "She may have told me, but it escapes me now. You tend to remember only the very important things. And her last name was not important. What was important was that she was a housekeeper at the hotel, she was nearly eighteen, a local girl, and she was absolutely gorgeous. Dave, I'm telling you, you cannot possibly imagine a more gorgeous girl."

"Prettier than Lizzie?" I tried. "Prettier than Kate?"

Grandpa made a scoffing noise. "I didn't say _pretty. _ I said _gorgeous_. Gina was like a model…like something out of Playboy…"

"Playboy?" I questioned.

"Never mind. You do know what _gorgeous_ means, don't you? Talk about legs that would not stop! She had to be five foot eight, at least. And the most beautiful olive colored skin, and her hair was brown, but it was kind of blondish in a way, and there was so much of it, cascading right over her shoulders to the small of her back…"

I saw him shiver. "Sorry," he said, "I gave myself a little tingle there, just thinking about her. And her eyes! These big…emerald green eyes…and her smile…her mouth…talk about big, pouty lips…"

Suddenly I found I could not keep myself from laughing. I guess it was a nervous reaction to all the information I was receiving. Of course I knew the stories about Grandpa Gordo and all those Hollywood starlets in his younger days. I had seen the pictures. But I had never heard him talking like this, about Grandma or anyone. It was difficult to look at Grandpa Gordo, with his gray hair and big bushy eyebrows, and imagine him lusting after some hot chick.

He started to laugh with me. "What's so funny, Dave?"

"I…I…I can't imagine…" I tried to spit out.

He kept laughing too, his eyes crinkling up with merriment. "Yeah, it is kind of funny, isn't it? But I know why you're laughing. You're laughing because you're thinking about me like the old man that I am, talking about this gorgeous Italian babe. Right? But wait! There's more! I haven't yet described her garbanzos to you!"

Now I was beside myself, and so was he. We spent about five minutes just laughing our asses off at that little table outside that gelataria. People passing by were giving us strange looks. Finally we managed to calm down, and when we did, Grandpa Gordo wiped his eyes and said, "Oh shit…" while I muttered the more appropriate, "Stars…" which everyone was using nowadays.

"Grandpa," I announced, "you're a dirty old man."

"I'm a happy old man," he corrected. "So! Do you want to hear about Gina's…_garbanzos_...or not?"

We looked at each other and suddenly I knew we were now closer than we'd ever been before, that somehow we had shared a rite of passage. Or that we were still sharing it, because Grandpa went on, in an awestruck voice, "They were…they were…spectacular. She was, as I said, a housekeeper for the hotel, and she wore this uniform, a white button up dress, and it was pretty short, by the way, but I guess they couldn't get a size to fit her right, because the buttons were always popping right across her chest. She had the biggest…fullest…without looking sloppy, I mean. They stood straight out. And her nipples---"

"Grandpa!" Now I really was shocked.

"Calm down, boy! I'm just telling you like it was. You have to understand what a knockout this girl was. She was just about the sexiest woman I'd ever seen to that point in my young life, and I haven't seen too many sexier since then."

"Not even Grandma?"

Grandpa wagged a finger at me. "We are not even going to go there, Davey. Your grandma is a whole 'nother story. And she's not in this particular story."

"I'm sorry," I said. "Go on."

"Go on, go on," he repeated. "Where the hell was I? Oh, yes! In the garden. Wallowing in self pity over Lizzie McGuire. Smelling the roses, watching the sun set. Feeling so alone and so small. Not one of my better moments. And then, I hear this disembodied female voice, very heavy Italian accent, but speaking in English, and whispering, 'End I told Agnees that eef she wants to be tat way, ten our friendsheep she is overrr!'"

I laughed. "What?"

"That's exactly what I asked myself. I looked around, I couldn't see anyone, but I kept hearing this voice whispering, with dramatically rolled '_rrrr'_s, 'Rrrroberto he dose not underrr-stant me ah tall! No, no. Rrrroberto…does not understand me…at all!"

Grandpa threw up his hands. "A mystery! I got up, I looked around. There were several lanes going this way and that, like a maze, and I walked carefully through them all. Soon I began to hear, but in a louder voice, a clear American accent, 'Well, then, you'll just have to tell Robert that he can go fuck himself!' Two women, two tourists, were sitting on a bench, discussing their personal lives. I rounded another corner, and once again I heard the whisper. 'Well…ten…you'll haf…haf..have…to tell Rrrroberto to go…to go fock heem…to go fuck heemself!'

"And then I saw her. On the bench, on the other side, hiding behind the bushes, easvesdropping on this private conversation and repeating every word she heard. That was my first glimpse of Gina, with her ear to the bushes, her uniform popping against her ample chest, and her thick golden brown hair falling in a long ponytail to the small of her back. Suddenly she sensed someone there, looked at me, and her eyes went wide with embarrassment. She stood straight up and came towards me, apologizing, 'Pleaze, no! Ees not how eet looks! I yam not eaf…eave…eaves…'

"'Eavesdropping?' I asked.

"She clapped her hands together. 'Eavesdropping!' she repeated triumphantly. 'No, no, no! I no do that!'

"I laughed and said, 'I think you _do_ do that.'

"She stepped closer and her eyes looked desperate. 'You are nice American boy. I always hear American boys very nice. No causing trouble. You will not tell? I no can lose theese job!'

"I'm sure I gave her a strange look. 'I won't tell anyone,' I said, and she put her hands together and lifted her head as if saying a prayer of thanks.

"'But I'm just curious,' I went on. 'What the heck were you doing?'

"She looked around, then grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me to another part of the garden, away from the two ladies who were having problems with Roberto. Gina sat me down on a bench, she sat beside me, and she took my hands in hers. I just about died on the spot, looking into those big green eyes. I had never before in my life been this close to such a beautiful woman. I mean, my Aunt Marlene, she was a looker, and she would give me a big kiss every time I saw her. But she couldn't hold a candle to Gina.

"And Gina began to explain herself to me, really more information than I asked for, but that was okay. She told me she lived with her family in a little village just north of the city, and she had always done very good in school and was very smart, always won all the school prizes, and now she had a scholarship for an exchange student opportunity to go to NYU in September. She was so excited to be going to America!

"The only thing she worried about was her English. She knew she spoke it well enough to get along, but she worried about her accent, her grammar, the slang, the colloquialisms. She wanted to talk better, so she watched American TV shows and studied with tapes, but she thought it was especially helpful to listen to real American people having real American conversations. She had taken this job at this hotel partly because she needed to earn the plane fare to get her to school in the fall, but also because she hoped that here she could meet a lot of Americans and learn by listening to them on a day to day basis.

"Only, on occasion, her obsession got the best of her, she revealed with a shy smile, and sometimes she found herself eavesdropping. And she kept repeating 'eavesdropping…eavesdropping…' because she liked learning new words, and wanted to make sure she said it correctly.

Grandpa Gordo sat back after all that and heaved a mighty sigh. "Then she asked me was she saying it right? Was she saying this right? Was she saying that right? How did you pronounce this word? Why was another word spelled one way yet said another? Tomato? Tomahto? She kept asking, and I kept answering, as if I were the ultimate authority on the English language. At least, Gina seemed to think I was," he smiled. "She couldn't get enough of this. She made me say certain phrases and sayings and listen to her say them back, asking how good her pronunciation was. We practiced and practiced and after a while I felt like goddamn Henry Higgins."

"Who?" I asked.

"An old tale, a professor of Language, never mind. What do they teach you kids in school these days, anyway? The point is, we were out there a long, long time. We sat in the garden and talked and talked, and up to that point that was the best moment of this whole trip for me. Because Gina was so beautiful, and so lovely, and so nice to be paying any attention to me at all.

"You've got to remember, Dave, I was this fourteen year old kid---well, almost fifteen---but very short and kind of scrawny looking. Girls didn't really go for me so much. They went for guys like that other boy who was on the trip, the one that was hanging out with Lizzie and Kate, that Ethan Craft. All the girls loved him. He was tall, he was blonde, and he had a way with the ladies. I'm not sure the elevator went to the top floor, but the ladies didn't seem to mind.

"But anyway, I had spent my whole life to that point seeing guys like Ethan Craft get all the girls, and me with zilch, zip, nada, so it was refreshing to have such a beautiful girl spend so much time with me, even if it only was to pick my brain about the English language.

"That night, that first night, we sat there in the garden talking and talking…oh, I don't know. Three hours? Four? It was dark, and Gina was way late getting home that night. She rode her bike into the city, and now she had to bike home in the dark. But she said she didn't mind.

"It was about nine o'clcok before one of her co-workers came to find her and yell at her in Italian. Suddenly she jumped up and explained to me that her father had called the hotel, wondering where she was. 'Mi papa, he is very good man, but he does worry for me so much. Too much.'

"'Why does he worry?' I asked.

"She spread her hands out, showing off her whole body. 'Look at me!' she announced. 'I am what you Americans call a "babe," no? These good looks!' And here she shook her fist at the sky. 'Eet ees a curse!' she bellowed to the sky. 'Mi papa, he is always of opinion that some man will get advantage of me. But ha, ha! He does not know me so well! I would never allow it! But is most vexing, because never am I knowing if a boy or a man he looks at me for my mind and my soul or only for these…_these_! Is most frush…frusht…it is…oh, it vexes me so!'

"'Frustrating?' I offered.

"'Yes! That is it!' she cried. Then she practiced her new word as she grabbed my sleeve again and said, 'Come, Daveed, walk with me to my bicycle.'

"As we walked around to the side of the building she continued her theme of how she never knew which men she could trust and which men were only after her body. She spoke very openly about her body, and I've got to tell you, as a fourteen year old boy, I found it most… frustrating. But at last, after she'd straddled her bike and was ready to pedal off, she looked at me in the moonlight, and she put her hand to the side of my face and gazed at me... and smiled...and she said, 'But you, Daveed…you are different, no? You are only a boy, and you are smart. So smart, I can tell. And I am certain you will only be most respectful of all women.'

"I nodded my head vigorously. 'Yes, yes," I agreed. 'Most respectful. Nothing but the highest respect."

"She kept smiling at me and I felt like I was going to die. She was so beautiful, and she apparently had no idea what she was doing to me when she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. "You are what we call… sweetheart, no? So sweet. Such a good boy. And you help me so much with my Engleesh. You meet with me tomorrow, yes?'

"'Yes,' I said, not even having to think about it.

"'Good,' she said. 'And we study more Engleesh?"

"'Yes,' I said.

"'And what ees eet...I can do for you in return?'

"She had to ask? Wasn't it obvious? Couldn't she see that just being with her was enough? And that kiss on the cheek…my young mind couldn't even begin to think of where else this could go. It was enough that she wanted to see me again. So I kept saying 'Yes, yes, tomorrow, in the garden, same time, same place, and we'll talk about English and America and anything else you want to talk about.'

"She beamed as she got up on her bike seat, and she said, 'I buy for you spaghetti! In restaurant across street. We eat, we talk Engleesh. Tomorrow I see you, sweet Daveed. Ciao!"

"Grandpa Gordo looked around. 'That restaurant… well, I don't think it's here any more. I think it was over there, where you see that pottery shop now. Yes, that's the place. That's where Gina and I met and ate spaghetti and talked…'"

Ooops. There he went again. Wandering. I waited, and at last he lifted his cup and said, "David, go get me another one of these."

"Grandpa! All that caffeine! If Grandma knew---"

"Grandma's not going to know," Grandpa Gordo said, once again digging into his pocket for money. "And bring us a few slices of pizza while you're at it. It's almost lunchtime, and this story is far from over."


	4. Chapter 4

_There seems to be some speculation as to who is the "Grandma" to Gordo's "Grandpa," and who are his former wives. As a point of interest, none of that really enters into this story, so I never thought it through far enough to figure it out. I think we can safely assume, by things mentioned in the story, that it's not Lizzie or Miranda. In the meantime, don't worry who Grandma is! Just know it's some woman he's been married to at least thirty or forty years, and I would guess they are still very much in love._

_Oh, and by the way, this story is not going to top out at 7 chapters. There are 8 chapters. The last chapter has been written now, so I know there are definately 8. Here is Chapter 4, as the story continues._

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Grandpa Gordo and I ate pizza and drank our coffee and soda, enjoying the cool afternoon breeze. His cell phone rang and he talked briefly with Grandma, saying yes he was with the boy, we were "bonding."

He winked at me, and when he hung up he explained, "Always tell women you're bonding. They love it when you bond."

"You seem to know a lot about women, Grandpa," I observed.

"It wasn't always so, Dave. It takes a lifetime to learn. And you'll still never know it all."

We finished eating in silence, then I felt compelled to say, "But I have a feeling you learned something from this Gina you're telling me about."

Grandpa smiled, almost laughed. "We're getting to that, Dave. Refresh an old man's memory. Where did I leave off?"

"She wanted you to meet her the next day, in the restaurant, to eat spaghetti and talk about English."

Grandpa Gordo laughed. "That's right! And that's what we did. Every night, for the rest of that week. Gina worked till five, which was just about the same time that our tour bus would deposit us back at the hotel. Lizzie, Kate and Ethan would get ready for their big night on the town. They were still looking for Paulo and Isabella. Ethan's dad was really rich and connected, so he might have been able to pull some strings for them.

"I didn't know and I didn't care. All I knew was that every night I was having dinner with this gorgeous girl who happened to think I was the best thing since sliced bread. Well, at least the best thing since honey. Because she kept telling me how sweet I was. I think she really thought that I was taking time to help her out with her English out of some altruistic tendency in my noble soul."

Here Grandpa Gordo laughed so hard he almost snorted. "Altruistic! Noble soul! This was the best thing that had ever happened to me! And the side benefit of spending so much quality time with such a lovely young woman was that my angsty feelings about Lizzie were beginning to pale in comparison.

"Gina had seen us together, coming into the hotel on the first day, and several times afterwards, she told me, and she wondered what our relationship was. Once she got me talking about Lizzie, it was like a dam had burst. It helped so much for me to be able to verbalize everything I'd been through these past months, being at the mercy of my feelings for Lizzie.

"I really didn't have anybody I could talk to about all this. I didn't have any guy friends that I felt comfortable enough with, and my actual two closest friends were girls, one of them being Lizzie herself. As for Miranda, I talked to her a little, but it was difficult, because she was a girl and I really couldn't tell her a lot of what I was feeling, what it did to me when I would see Lizzie wearing certain kinds of clothes, or playing with her hair when she didn't think I was looking. It was just too embarrassing, it just wasn't appropriate.

"But with Gina…well, I quickly learned that she had no qualms whatsoever talking about sex and emotions and bodily responses. She understood me completely. And she also understood how frustrating it was to love someone who didn't love you back. She had been through something like that, with a boy named Antonio, and she told me all about it.

"So we were two poor lost souls, sharing our tales of woe over plates and plates of spaghetti and garlic bread. Talk about bonding! It was amazing. Here was a girl who understood me so well. And I think…I really think…I started to fall in love with her, even after only those few days we had together.

"And she liked me too. I know she did. But she really didn't see me as a romantic possibility. At least not at first. To her I was just this nice American boy, emphasis on _boy_, emphasis on _nice, _and the thing she said she liked most about me was that I wasn't always flirting with her, and groping her, and coming on to her, like so many of the men she met, American and otherwise. She liked that I was respectful, that I didn't just treat her like a 'pretty peeze of azz.'"

Here he laughed, obviously remembering her voice, as he had tried to recreate her accent and tone.

"She told me stories, though, about working in the hotel, about going into the rooms to change the sheets, and finding men there laying in bed and waiting for her, thinking that just because she _looked _like the girl in their most intense fantasies that she was going to all of the sudden _act_ like the girl in those fantasies. I don't know if half of what she told me was true. But if it is, then your mother is right when she says men are pigs.

"Well, some men are pigs. But Gina knew how to deal with those pigs. Believe me, her father had nothing to worry about. She was a tough girl. I guess she had to learn to be tough, looking the way she did.

"Anyway," Grandpa Gordo went on. "That was my week in Roma. Every day on the bus, whirlwind tour of Italy, every evening in the cozy little restaurant, lingering over dinner with a beautiful Italian girl who was a dream come true.

"Because I did start to dream about her, and I would wake up from those dreams early, early in the morning, in the hotel bed, having made a mess of the hotel sheets, and knowing that Gina herself was going to be the one to come in and change those sheets and see what I had done. If she looked at the sheets that closely, which I don't know if she did, and I certainly wasn't going to ask her.

"On the one hand, I was ashamed, dreading that she would know, wondering if she would realize she was the one sparking these dreams, and yet at the same time---and I know this is going to sound weird---I almost thought of it as a present, something of myself that I could give to her, to let her know how I was really beginning to feel about her. I don't know. Is that weird?"

I found that I was staring at Grandpa Gordo. "The thing that's weird," I heard myself say, "is that you're telling me any of this at all, Grandpa."

"You're growing up," he said simply. "We can talk like men, can't we?"

I nodded wordlessly, wondering what else he was getting ready to tell me.

He paused for a long time, and the longer he paused, the more I anticipated his next words. At last he spoke.

"A few times…in the evening…after we'd eaten, we'd take a walk around town. Gina loved showing me the city. We couldn't go very far by foot, and I was always aware of how much time I had before I knew the Ungerperson would be doing a head count, but we got to see quite a bit this way. We could have gone a lot further if we'd taken her bike, and I suggested it, but she insisted the only way to really see Rome was on foot. For Gina, it was all about the journey, not the destination.

"But we did end up at some really fine destinations. She took me inside this really punky record store, an incredible bakery, and a bunch of other offbeat places that we weren't hitting during the day on the tour bus. And one night we even made a brief stop in a little dance club that was a lot further away than I had ever intended to walk. But Gina had so much wanted to show it to me, and I couldn't refuse her.

"She had planned it the night before, and even brought a change of clothes. She was wearing this little silk skirt and some kind of clingy top that criss-crossed over her boobs and showed everything, I mean everything. I couldn't believe I was going into a dance club with a girl that looked like _that!_ She dragged me in and introduced me to all her friends and I felt like such a kid, but I got to tell you, I also felt like the goddamn luckiest bastard in the whole wide world.

"Then she dragged me out on to the dance floor, and as I'm sure you know, Dave, I don't know how to dance. Never did, never will. Gina tried to teach me, she was laughing so hard, and I couldn't help but laugh with her. But eventually she gave up on that, and a slow song came on, and she said, 'Here, now you dance to this.'

"I tried to tell her it was no good, but she wrapped my arms around her, and put her arms up on my shoulders, and said, "Move, Daveed. Just move…back… and forth. That's all."

She was almost a whole head taller than me, and she pulled in close so that her breasts were just barely touching my shirt, her nipples brushing against me…and you can guess what happened. Goddamn hormones.

"On account of being so short, I was pretty much staring directly at her neck, so if I looked down only a little I was staring at her cleavage, but if I looked up only a little, I was staring at her mouth. And there was something about her mouth that night. I so much wanted to kiss her. And I almost felt like she wanted to kiss me.

"She kept smiling at me, and every once in a while I would see her tongue peek out, wetting her lips, as if she was getting them ready for something, but then she didn't do anything, and jackass that I was, I didn't do anything either. But Dave, I'm telling you, I felt so close. So close."

Grandpa Gordo paused again, and this time he shut his eyes. He was not one of those old guys who would fall asleep sitting up, but after a while I began to wonder. I think he was just lost in a memory.

Finally I said, "So, Grandpa. Did you ever kiss her?"

He opened his eyes, shifted in his chair. "Patience, Dave. I'm getting to that."


	5. Chapter 5

_The last two days of nano are upon us, but I wanted to take a moment to post one more chapter of this before I get wrapped up in the final sprint towards the finish line. I don't know about anyone else, but my FF stats no longer work properly, so I have no idea how many hits I'm getting on this story, and yet I will plug away. Thanks for all your great reviews! _

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I'm a smart kid. I do well in school. And not to brag or anything, but I play chess pretty good also. Actually, it was Grandpa Gordo who taught me chess, who taught me how to always anticipate the next move. So when we got to this point in his story and I asked him if he ever kissed Gina, I pretty much already knew the answer. What I didn't know, what I could have never anticipated, was everything that surrounded that answer, and all the details he was about to supply.

I think I mentioned before that in my family we don't really talk about things like this. Despite the show business connections, we're usually pretty reserved and conservative. So this whole story was kind of a shocker for me, and before the end of it my mouth was hanging open.

I don't know if Grandpa Gordo was trying to shock me, or if he just thought it would make us closer if he shared something so important and significant. Or maybe, it was just that he had finally got to the point that some old people get to, when they've been alive so long, they really don't give a crap what anybody thinks about them anymore.

Or maybe he was just enjoying the memory.

He went into another one of those silent spells and when he picked up his narrative, his voice was quiet, subdued. I almost felt he wasn't really here with me anymore, but that he was back there, with Gina, seeing her, hearing her, smelling her, even tasting her.

"Ever since that first night at the restaurant," he said, "when I said how good the spaghetti was, Gina had been telling me that was nothing, I should taste her mother's spaghetti. She made a sauce, with fresh tomatoes from their garden, and fresh oregano and basil. It was the most delicious pasta in the world, she said.

"I could tell by the way Gina talked about her mother and her father that she really loved them, and her little sister, Gabriella. I remember her name, that's such a pretty name, isn't it?

"Gina described her house, her homelife, and it sounded like something out of a storybook. My homelife at that point wasn't really that great. I mean, my parents loved me in their own way, but they were always so busy with their patients and their real estate investments, they weren't usually available when I needed them. They were good to me, but we weren't really so close. Not as close as I wanted to be.

"Not as close as what Gina was describing to me about her family, grandma and grandpa living down the street, everybody always hugging and kissing, big family gatherings out in the yard on a summer day, music playing, soccer game in the field, relatives coming from miles around, and barrels and barrels of pasta! I never had that when I was a kid. My friends were great, of course, but sometimes I feel that I really missed something important while I was growing up. That's why I love it so much now when we all get together on these family vacations. We have some good times, don't we, Dave?"

"We do," I agreed.

"I missed that when I was a kid. That's why when Gina kept inviting me over to her house to have some real homecooked Italian food, I so much wanted to go. Well, that, and to be with her of course. I couldn't imagine anything better.

"But it was so hard to say yes, on account of the Unger. You know how straight edge I was, Dave. I was the kid who never disobeyed the rules, never did anything wrong. I didn't want to get shipped back home in disgrace. Lizzie and Kate and Ethan were out every night, gallivanting all over Rome, and somehow they weren't getting caught, but I knew how the universe worked. If I did it once, that would be the end. I didn't want to take that chance. Not so much on account of the disgrace, the way my parents would be disappointed in me, but mostly because I was so enjoying Gina's company, and we had so little time together as it was, I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize it.

"Our walks around town each evening were one thing, that was allowed. But if I were to go with her to her home outside the city, it would be so late before I could possibly get back. I didn't want to risk getting caught sneaking in after the head count. So I played by the rules and kept telling Gina no, no, no, I could not go to her house. Then she would pout at me playfully, and beg me some more, 'Oh, pleeze, Daveed! I want so much you meet Papa! I tell him all about you! And Mama, she wants to be meeting you too. I tell her how skeeny you are, she wants to fatten you up!' And then Gina would tickle my skinny ribs and I would just about die when she touched me. Dave, I'm telling you, this girl was so hot, if she touched you anywhere, you were pretty much guaranteed an instant boner, I swear."

I sighed, but did not scold him, as I had earlier. I was starting to get used to this.

"Anyway," he went on, "it got to be the last night, and Gina was still begging me to come to her house to eat her mother's spaghetti, so finally I said yes. It was the last night, I would be going home by plane in the morning anyway, what more could the Ungerthingy do to me? And I was so sad to have to be leaving Gina. I wanted to spend as much time with her as I possibly could. A late night at her house sounded like Heaven. We would bike there, and she said her papa could drive me back to the hotel later.

"So it got to be five o'clock and finally she was off her shift. I asked her shouldn't she call her family first to let them know I was coming, but she said it was not important. Visitors were always welcome, and she was anxious to go, since it looked like a summer rainstorm was getting ready to roll in.

"We got on her bicycle. She had these pegs coming out of the back wheel so a passenger could stand up behind. I offered to pedal, but she laughed and said no, she was quite sure I would be no trouble at all as a passenger. She said she had carried home sacks of potatoes from the market that weighed more than I did. I did tell you how scrawny I was, right? So I just stood up on those pegs and put my hands on her shoulders and off we went.

"It was exhilarating. Exhilarating, and a little scary. The traffic in Roma is actually more than a little scary, as we saw earlier today, remember? And a few times I thought _That's it, we're dead_, but Gina was an expert cyclist and managed to get us through all the obstacles.

"The sky was darkening, a breeze was blowing, and the air was starting to get that smell it gets right before a big storm. 'I get us there before rain!' Gina called back to me, and doubled her speed as we came to the outskirts of town.

"Now the road was open before us, and she was really able to fly. But the road was also a little bumpy, and I realized it wasn't safe for me to just be holding on to her shoulders like I was. I was digging in so hard, that finally she glanced back and said, 'Daveed! Grab the middle!' I knew what she meant, because I had just been thinking about it, and I knew it was the only thing to do. I reached down with one arm and then the other, and grabbed her waist, holding on for dear life.

"The thing is, as soon as I grabbed her, I naturally had to pull my whole body up closer to hers, and now I was pressed against her, and my face was practically in her hair, all that beautiful golden brown hair that smelled so good, like…like…I can't explain what it smelled like, but you know what I mean, if you've ever smelled a girl's hair. I had never been next to a girl quite like this before, and it started to do things to me. You know what I mean. And pretty soon Gina knew it too. She glanced back again and laughed and said, 'Daveed! What is poking?'

"Oh my God! I was mortified. 'I'm sorry.' That's all I could think of to say. I tried to pull away, but I really couldn't, not without totally loosing my grip on her and falling off the bike. So I had to stay like that. And I kept saying 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' like a total idiot.

"But do you know what she said? She glanced back again and winked. 'You are bad boy, no?' Then she laughed and said, 'No sorry! I like. Eet feels good.' It feels good! This girl was incredible. If I wasn't already, I think I fell in love with her right then."

Grandpa Gordo stopped, reveling in the memory. I didn't dare breathe.

"And then," he went on, "then it started to rain. Buckets. Thunder, lightning, and buckets of rain. And Gina kept pedaling, laughing like mad, and I was laughing too. We were out on a country road now, nothing around, no houses, no cars. It was not yet six o'clock, but on account of the storm it was pretty dark, except when the lightning lit the sky. If I had been out there on my own, I would have run off the road for sure. But Gina knew exactly where she was going and didn't seem at all concerned.

"The asphalt road turned to gravel, then the gravel turned to dirt, which was actually mud in all this rain. Gina stopped the bike. We had to get off and walk, the bike would not go through the mud. Our shoes were all wet and grubby. How much longer? I asked Gina. She said we were almost there, but she saw no lights in the house. She guessed the storm had knocked out the power. Apparently it happened frequently in thunderstorms. She didn't seem concerned. She explained there were plenty of candles, and the stove was gas, not electric, so dinner would still be served.

"About this time, I was so ready for a nice, hot, home-cooked meal. I couldn't wait to get into the house and dry off. I could see the house now, finally, up the road, on the left. It was a large two story house. It appeared to be made entirely of concrete stucco, a tile roof, a straightforward design, each window with wooden shutters, and a large fence out front. It was a place that looked like home. Maybe like a home I had never had. And I couldn't wait to get there.

"So I challenged Gina, 'Last one there is a rotten egg!' I know. Not a very mature thing to say. But I said it, and I ran, and she followed.

"And then…and then…as I rounded the gate, I lost my footing in the mud, and down I went. Into the mud. And Gina came up behind me, laughing like crazy, saying, 'Silly boy! Silly American boy!' I looked up at her, covered in mud as I was, and she kept laughing at me. But it was not a mean-spirited laugh, she was just having a grand old time. And try as I might to be upset and annoyed, I just couldn't. Her laughter was so contagious.

"And as she reached down to offer me a hand, feeling more playful than I ever had before in my life, I took her hand and tried to pull her down in the mud with me. She gasped and said, 'Daveed! What do you do!' as she held onto the gate. I could not pull her down, hard as I tried, and we were both there like that, in the rain and in the mud, laughing our asses off.

"Finally Gina said 'Daveed! Let go, pleeze! No mud, pleeze! In the house is hot water for bathing, but not much! Maybe not enough for both you and me. And you…you must bathe!"

"I appreciated the situation and let her pull me up. We continued up to the house, which was completely dark. As we approached Gina noted that the family car was not in the driveway. She now began to seem concerned.

"We went into the front door and she lit a candle in the foyer and brought it into the first room of the house, which was a large kitchen. On the table she found a note and read it, and began to exclaim, 'Angelina! My cousin! She is having the baby! _Mama mia!_ They all go to see the baby!' Apparently they had tried to get hold of Gina at the hotel to inform her, but the message had not been received.

Everyone had gone. Her mother, her father, her sister, her grandparents next door. They had traveled by car to some town, I don't remember the name, but if was about fifty miles away, and they would be staying there overnight. Gina was home alone. And I was with her.

She lit a few more candles. I heard the rain beating against the window panes, I felt the mud dripping off me on to the nice clean kitchen floor. Gina stood before me, looked me up and down and decided, 'Clothes off, Daveed. Now, I give you bath.'"


	6. Chapter 6

_Such a busy day, but it won't be over until I post another chapter of this story. Enjoy._

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Grandpa Gordo looked at me and burst out laughing. "The look on your face, Dave!" He wiped a tear from his eye. "You look so much like me when I was a boy, do you know that? The look on your face…that must be exactly the way I looked when Gina said she was going to give me a bath."

I realized my mouth was hanging open, so I shut it. "Grandpa," I said, "surely she didn't mean…"

He laughed again, but this time more quietly. "Listen," he said, "and I'll tell you exactly what she meant, and exactly what she did, only I warn you, I've never told you a story like this before. You might be a little shocked. Do you think you can handle it?"

I nodded, though secretly I was worried I was not going to be able to handle it. It wasn't what I thought I might hear that disturbed me, it was who I was hearing it from. They say you can never picture your parents having sex. Well then, so much more your grandparents. And I was pretty sure some kind of sex was on the way. But I said, "Go ahead, Grandpa."

He settled back with a mighty sigh. "So then…where was I? Oh yes, Gina had just told me she was going to give me a bath, and I was staring at her with my mouth hanging open, and by the way, still dripping mud everywhere. She walked across the room and stood before me, and when I didn't do anything but keep staring at her, she reached up and started to unbutton my shirt.

"I threw off her hands, squeaking out 'What the hell are you doing?' I say 'squeaking' because I very clearly remember exactly what my voice sounded like, and I sounded so young, and so worried, and so lost. But Gina just kept on smiling at me. Her eyes were so green, and she was also wet, like me, but not muddy, and her hair was dripping down the front of her uniform, that was plastered to her body, showing everything. Here this sexy Italian babe was trying to undress me, and I felt terrified.

"But then she spoke to me, so softly. 'Daveed,' she said. 'Why so… tense? No more dreeping mud on mama's beautiful keetchen floor. Come now, give me your shirt, I will put it to wash.'

"So I let her talk me out of my shirt, but I took it off myself and handed it to her. I was very self-conscious about my body in those days, you understand. My chest was all pale and skinny, and no hair to speak of at age fourteen. I could see her looking at me, and I wished so fervently that I didn't look so much like a baby. But she kept on smiling at me as she took my shirt and brought it across the room to what I imagine was a washing machine. 'Ohh!' she exclaimed. 'I forget! No electricity. No matter, when it comes, I wash for you later, no? Now give to me pants.'

"God! This girl didn't let up, did she? She was bound and determined to undress me. I watched her come back into the kitchen. She lit another candle, she filled a big pot with water and put it on the stove, lighting the burner. 'Soon we eat,' she announced, and then she pulled out some glasses and filled them with wine, and brought me a glass, saying, 'Here, drink.'

"'You're giving me wine?' I questioned, reminding her that I was only fourteen. Well, I think I said, 'not quite fifteen.' Because my birthday was the following month, and at this point I wanted to feel as old as I possibly could, not like a kid, if there was any way I could help it. But as soon as I said it, I realized I shouldn't have made a fuss about drinking wine. That only made me sound more like a kid. I was so torn at this point between wanting to feel all grown up and at the same time so aware of what a child I was.

"'In my country, we all drink wine,' Gina said, taking a sip from her glass. 'And you know as they say, "When in Rome…"'

"Yes, I did know that saying. Do you know that saying Dave? Do they still say it?"

I nodded at him. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

"That's it," Grandpa Gordo said. "How could I argue with logic like that? So I drank the wine, I drank it down really fast, and Gina said that was good, it would warm me up, because it looked like I was cold, and then she asked again for my pants.

"Well, I wasn't going to argue with her anymore. I tool off my pants. But I didn't give her my shorts. I needed them to keep her from seeing what was once again happening to my body. Goddamn hormones.

"I stood behind one of the kitchen chairs, hoping to hide myself, and watched her go back to the washing machine, where she left my pants with my shirt, and then she unbuttoned her dress and wiggled out of it and added it to the pile of laundry.

"I moved in a little closer behind the chair, and now I think I was beginning to feel the wine. I didn't feel cold anymore, not one bit. I was totally heated up by the sight of Gina in her slip. I don't know if women really wear slips like that anymore. Well, your grandma does, it's called a full slip, it's like a dress, only all silky, with a built-in bra and thin, satin straps---"

"I know what it is, Grandpa," I said. "I've seen a woman's slip."

He grinned at me. "You have?" he asked. "Now where might you have seen something like that, Davey?"

"Never mind, Grandpa. Get on with the story. What color was her slip?"

"It was white. I know you thought I was going to say it was black, or maybe red. But it was white, on account of it going under her uniform, I guess. But that didn't make it any less sexy. Maybe moreso, I don't know. At that point anything would have looked sexy to me. I was so on fire.

"And then, to make matters worse, Gina got a clean towel from the shelves near the washing machine, and she walked straight over to me, and she began to wipe the mud off my face, my neck, my arms. I just stood there like a dummy, letting her do it, feeling myself getting harder and harder each time she touched me with that big soft towel, and she just kept smiling at me, like she knew exactly what she was doing to me. I saw her glance down below as if to see if there was any mud there she could attack, but my pants and my sneakers had kept me pretty clean. But I knew what she was really looking at, and she gave me another big smile, and I think a wink, but it was hard to see her very clearly in the candlelight.

"Then she said, 'Now you feel more relaxed, no? The wine is good.'

"'Yes,' I said, 'the wine was very good.'

"'You have more.'

"'No!' I exclaimed. God! Was she trying to get me drunk? What was she planning to do with me?

"'Ohhh…' she pouted, but still she was smiling. 'Well, then, never mind. Now I take you upstairs for bath. Then you are feeling more relaxed, and clean, and ready for dinner to eat. No family, no power, but we have good time, no?'

"I didn't know how to answer that. All those 'no's' had just confused the hell out of me, and my head was spinning. But yes, I was starting to feel more relaxed, and hell, I was having a good time, almost despite my uptight American self. Already I knew this was the adventure of my life. I just had no idea how much more of an adventure it was going to become."

At this point Grandpa made another one of those annoying pauses, as he collected his thoughts. It was all I could do to keep myself from saying, "So what next? What next?" I didn't want to appear too anxious to see if this Gina ever got out of her slip, and what she would look like, how he would describe her. At any rate, I was pretty sure by this point that whatever happened, Grandpa Gordo was not going to spare any of the details.

"So we went upstairs," he said at last. "There was a bathroom at the end of the hall. It wasn't quite like any bathroom you might see in America these days. The bathtub was really old-fashioned, the kind with legs, I don't think they make them anymore like that. Do you know what I mean, Dave?"

"I've seen it in pictures," I said. "Was there hot and cold running water?"

"Oh, yeah!" Grandpa exclaimed. "It wasn't that old-fashioned. But there was no showerhead, no shower curtain, you could only take a bath. Gina lit a few candles that were scattered about the room. I guess the electricity went out a lot there. Candles were everywhere. So the room lit up nicely, and she began to fill the tub, and she threw in something that made a lot of bubbles. And it smelled really good too.

"There may not have been any electricity, but the water pressure was excellent, and that tub filled up so fast. I just stood there, shielding myself with the edge of the sink, watching Gina lean over the tub, running her hands through the bubbles. Then she stood up straight, looked me in the eye and said, 'This bath, she looks so good, maybe I jump in with you, no?'

"Well, I think I'd been pretty good to this point, stripping down to my shorts, letting her wipe me all over with a towel, but my uptight American sensibilities told me that at some point I had to object to 'When in Rome…' Part of me wanted to object, but another part, the part I was trying to hide behind the edge of the sink, wanted to say, 'Sure, let's go!'

"I was struggling with these conflicting urges, unable to reply, when suddenly Gina burst out laughing and I realized she had only been joking, only playing with me, and then I think I must have blushed really red, only thank God she probably couldn't see it in the candlelight.

"'I leave you now, Daveed,' she said. 'I go downstairs to cook for us dinner. I call for your when food is ready.'

I nodded and watched her leave the room... watched her walk down that dark hallway by the light of the one candle she still carried... watched the sway of her hips under that silky white slip that was glowing like a beacon light in the darkness of this stormy night.

"When she was gone, I could hear her downstairs in the kitchen, singing some song in Italian as she prepared our dinner, Only then did I close the bathroom door and decide to finally sink into this bath she insisted on me taking. I closed the door and tried to lock it, but guess what? No lock.

"Right away my instincts told me this meant trouble. My instincts told me Gina would be back. She was feeling far too comfortable with me tonight, far too flirtatious. No one had ever flirted with me so seriously before. Certainly not Lizzie McGuire, though I would have loved it if she had.

"But right now, as I pulled off my shorts and stepped naked into that hot, wonderful bath, Lizzie McGuire was the last thing on my mind. All I could think of was Gina, wondering when I would see her again. She had only just left, and already I was wondering when I would see her again. I knew she was trouble, and yet I couldn't wait to see her again."

Damn! Another one of those long pauses. I was getting anxious. I looked at Grandpa, and I think he must have been remembering what it felt like to relax in that hot and wonderful bubble bath, but I was wondering what happened next. So finally, when he had left me hanging too long, I said, casually, "So, Grandpa. Did she come back? Did she come back and visit you while you were taking your bath?"

His eyes refocused, and he looked across the table and grinned at me. "Three times, Davey. Three times. And each visit more incredible than the one before. Are you sure you're ready to hear this?"


	7. Chapter 7

_Enjoy._

_-_

-

"I'm ready to hear this," I said to Grandpa, without hesitation.

Grandpa Gordo looked at me warily. "Your parents would probably kill me if they knew the kinds of thoughts I was about to put in your head."

"Oh, come on, Grandpa," I reasoned. "Didn't we decide we could talk together like men? I'm old enough. Besides, you've told me so much already, what would be the sense in stopping now?"

Grandpa laughed a little to himself and looked me in the eye, shaking his head. "I ain't told you _nothin'_ yet, Davey," he said with certainty.

I got a little chill when he said that. This was definitely the strangest conversation I had ever had with Grandpa Gordo, and it was no doubt about to get a lot stranger.

"Okay," he said finally. "I guess I really can't leave you hanging at this point, so here we go. Imagine me, not quite fifteen years old, enjoying this hot, fragrant, candlelit bubble bath in an old fashioned tub somewhere in the Italian countryside just north of Rome, while this gorgeous, sexy, and incredibly flirtatious Italian babe is cooking me dinner downstairs. Does life get any better than this?

"My answer? An unequivocal 'Yes!' Because after I've been in that bathtub for a little while, getting so relaxed, here comes Gina again. Like I knew she would, didn't I tell you? She just opens the door and walks right in, and I jump a little, saying 'Hey! Have you ever heard about knocking?' I mean, I was thinking what if I wasn't in the tub? What if I was naked? What if she saw me?

"But Gina just scoffed and said, 'You Americans! Always so tight up!'

"So I laughed a little and said, '_Uptight_. I think you're trying to say we're uptight.'

"'Yes, you are!' Gina said. 'So uptight, Daveed! Relax!'

"'I am relaxed!' I objected. And I was. But in a way I was still so uptight.

"Gina just looked at me, silently smirking a little. She had me pegged. But she didn't say any more about it. She put down her candle and showed me what she was carrying in her arms. She had brought me some clean clothes to wear. They were her sister's. Her little sister Gabriella was my age, and according to Gina about the same size, and not only that but sometimes she dressed more like a boy than a girl. 'She is what you call tomboy, no?' Gina brought me a pair of Levi's that could be for a boy or a girl---do they still make Levi's?"

I nodded but said nothing, not wanting to break his train of thought.

Grandpa nodded back, and went on, "And she also brought me a tee shirt. It was for an American band at the time, I know you've never heard of them, they were called The Backstreet Boys. I just about burst out laughing when I saw that. Back in the day, Davey, there were these…well, we called them 'pretty boy bands.' They were not so much about the music as they were about attracting the young teenage girls who would then go out and buy their CD's and posters and school lunchboxes and tee shirts exactly like the one Gina had brought me to wear.

"But no self-respecting _guy_ at the time would ever be caught dead wearing a tee shirt for The Backstreet Boys. It was strictly a girlie thing. So I laughed and I said to Gina, 'Oh no, no way!'

"She looked at me quizzically and said, 'You no like?'

"I said to her 'I no like. And I no wear that shirt. I would just as soon go around shirtless.'

"I didn't mean anything when I said it. I wasn't trying to start anything. But she sat down in a chair beside the tub, and crossed her legs and looked at me. She was still wearing that slip, by the way, and when she crossed her legs, I could almost see up her legs, but not quite. It was a good thing I was covered with bubbles, because she was doing it to me again, you know what I mean. Especially because she kept looking at me, and looking at me. I was feeling a little self conscious, knowing I was naked underneath all these bubbles, and Gina seemed to be settling in to watch me take my bath.

"And then she sat way back and said, 'Okay to see you in no shirt, Daveed. I like.'

"And I gave her this surprised look, I'm sure, and I said, 'You like?' Not because I was trying to start anything, but because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I've told you a few times already how skinny I was. I was not the kind of guy that girls went ga-ga over when they saw me without a shirt. There was nothing there worth seeing.

"But Gina had seen me downstairs, and she was seeing me now, and she was saying, 'Yes, is nice, I think, when man or boy has not too much hair, or no hair on the chest. I no like when man looks like…like big, hairy ape!' Here she made some motions like a big hairy ape, and we both laughed, but I've got to tell you, Davey, I was all tingly inside. I don't think I'd ever had a woman compliment my body before, and if you don't think that did something to me, then…well...it did plenty for me.

"And then, to make things even worse, she went on saying she liked it also when a man was not too fat. Fat guys apparently really turned her off. And she liked it when their skin was all smooth and pale. And not too tall. She didn't like tall guys. Too hard to reach up and kiss. And she liked curly hair.

"Basically she was saying that the kind of guy she most liked looked exactly like me. It was the heaviest flirting I'd ever been subjected to in my life, and a part of me started to believe it would have been perfectly acceptable to her if I stood up right then and there and got out of that bathtub and threw her on the floor and humped the daylights out of her. That was what I was imagining I was hearing her say. God! She was playing with me in the worst way. It was so unfair.

"And then suddenly she stood up and said, 'Oh, spaghetti!' and ran back downstairs to finish cooking, leaving me there with this huge boner that I really couldn't do anything about in the bathtub. So I just sat back and tried to think of other stuff, and let it die down.

"The bubbles began to die down too, after a while, and the water was not as warm as it had been earlier. I had been there quite a while and I was just starting to think it was time to get out of the tub, when here comes Gina again.

"She had run out so quickly the time before, she hadn't closed the door properly, so I looked behind me to see if I could see her coming down the hallway, because I certainly didn't want to have her walk in on me all naked. So I looked first, and sure enough, here comes the candlelight in the hallway. So I stayed in the tub, and then there she was, in the bathroom with me again.

"Only now she's not wearing the slip anymore, she's down to just her bra and panties. And there goes my schlong again. Do they still use that word…scholong?"

I just stared at Grandpa blankly. I couldn't speak.

"Well, no matter," he said. "You know what I mean. A beautiful girl with large, round breasts walks in wearing only her bra and panties, you know what happens. And now, like I said, there were not so many bubbles as before, so I got a little frantic, trying to cover up. And Gina says to me, 'Daveed! Soon is time to eat. And what is this? Still you no wash your hair?'

"'How do you wash your hair?' I asked, sounding pretty frantic. It sounded stupid, I know, like I had never washed my hair before, but what I meant was that I had always taken showers, not baths, and I didn't really know the right way to wash your hair in the bathtub.

"So Gina looks at me and shakes her head, making 'Tsk, tsk' noises, and she gets down on her knees beside the tub. 'Like _theese_, silly,' she says, and proceeds to turn on the tub faucet and fill up this pitcher that I had noticed on the shelf, but had no idea what it was for.

"I was so busy looking at her breasts hanging over the tub, hovering over the water, almost touching me, that I almost didn't notice when she took that pitcher of water and poured it right over the top of my head.

"I think I might have screamed, or at least cried out in surprise, and then Gina was laughing as she turned off the faucet, and she reached out and touched my wet hair, running her fingers through my curls. I had a lot of hair back in those days…well, pretty much as much as I have now, and it was so curly, and so thick, it looked just like yours, and Gina was testing it out, to see if she had gotten it wet enough.

"She decided my hair was wet enough, and she leaned all the way across the tub in front of me, reaching for the shampoo on the shelf, and her breasts were so close I could have just reached out and touched them, and I thought maybe that's what she wanted me to do, but I restrained myself and closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew, her hands were in my hair, soaping me up with shampoo, and she was lathering and massaging my head until I'm sure I was moaning with the pleasure of it all. Davey! You have not lived until you have had a beautiful woman shampooing your hair. In her underwear. With her breasts hanging right there in front of your face."

He stopped and looked at me, then added in a suddenly responsible tone, "Though you might want to wait until you're a little older to try this."

I still could not talk. By this point, I was just along for the ride, and then Grandpa Gordo started up again, taking me on the final downhill run.

"I pulled my legs up as close as I could to hide…you know, everything that was going on, because there were no more bubbles in the tub to hide behind, and then Gina filled the pitcher again and poured it over my head to rinse out the shampoo, not once but twice. It felt so incredible. Then I asked her to do it one more time, just for the hell of it. And then she ruffled up my wet hair and said, 'Five minutes, Daveed. I go now to heat sauce. You get dressed, come to kitchen, then we eat. Yes?"

"As she said this, she reached in the tub and pulled out the stopper. 'Yes, yes!' I said, 'You go downstairs! I'll be there in a minute.' I had no idea how fast the tub was going to drain, and even though the water offered only minimal coverage at this point, it was a damn sight better than to think of sitting there stark naked in front of her. So I tried to shoo her out of the room.

"She left, and I saw the candlelight retreating down the hallway. Once again, she had not closed the door. But the hallway was dark, so I felt pretty sure she had made it all the way downstairs. Now at last I began to feel comfortable enough about standing up. I only wished she would have closed the damn door!

"No matter. I had my plan. Stand up, reach for towel, wrap it around my waist, go shut the door, and then hope to God this enormous erection I was still enjoying was not going to prevent me from fitting inside her sister's pants.

"I turned my head and did one more check down the hall. It appeared dark and vacant. I stood up in the tub. I reached for the towel she had left on the chair. I fluffed it out with every intention of wrapping it around my waist, but before I could get that far, I sensed… something… at the bathroom doorway, and I turned quickly and looked…and there she was, in the doorway, in the dark, peeking, looking at me, and I was naked as a jaybird, and she had seen everything. I mean everything.

"'Gina!' I screamed, hurrying to hide myself with the towel. 'What the hell are you doing?' My heart was racing like mad, because I think I already knew the answer to that question. I think I already knew that she had not come back to tell me something or ask me something or pour another pitcher of water over my head. She knew I would be getting out of the tub, and she knew I would be naked, and she came back to see me. And she got what she came for."

Grandpa Gordo sighed. "Actually.. she got that...and a whole lot more. And I got...well, I got more than I ever...ever expected..."


	8. Chapter 8

_Now this story will be over, and I have to tell you this is one of my own personal favorites. I hope you'll like the conclusion._

_For a tease, I can tell you I have been persuaded to write a sequel to my Curious stories, and that will be coming up within the next few weeks. Again the title will be short and sweet: Caught. So you can pretty much guess what happens to LG this time around! Thanks to Woemcat and Spotmouse for putting the idea in my head! (Hey, Cat and Mouse! Are you sure you guys didn't conspire together?)_

_Oh, and by the way, speculation is still open as to who Grandma might be. Of course, that might be another story altogether...you think? _

_-_

-

Grandpa Gordo stopped now and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. When he spoke again at last, I felt quite sure he was no longer here with me on this city street, but he was back in that candlelit bathroom, seeing, hearing, smelling…even tasting everything that happened next.

"Gina walked in slowly," Grandpa continued, eyes still closed. "She came directly to me and stood before me. In my haste, I had not been able to wrap myself in the towel, and I only had it bunched up over the front of my body, hiding my glorious manhood from her as best I could."

He stopped a moment and chuckled, no doubt remembering his teenage self. "Standing in the tub I was a few inches taller, so now I was face to face with her, and in the candlelight I could see her eyes searching mine. I could tell by the expression in her eyes that the time for teasing was over. If this was going to happen, it was going to happen now. But she didn't touch me, at least not at first. She just kept looking at me, searching my face, and at last she said, 'Daveed…do you want me?'

"Oh God, did I want her! I drew in a deep, almost painful breath. I don't think I'd ever wanted anything so much in my life. 'Yes, I want you,' I said. Somewhere in the back of my mind there was a shadow of a thought about Lizzie. In more lucid moments I had convinced myself that I wanted my first time to be with Lizzie. Me and Lizzie together. But where was Lizzie now? She barely knew I existed anymore. And at this particular moment, I could barely remember what she looked like. Lizzie was just a dream. But Gina was real, and she was standing in front of me, offering herself to me, and there was no way I could lie or refuse. So I said again, 'Oh God, yes, Gina, I want you.'

"'And I want you,' she said simply, and she reached for my arms and pulled them away from my body, and the towel I was covering myself with fell into the tub at my feet. Gina put my hands on her hips, and she reached up her hands to cup my face, and in the next moment, she was kissing me. But not like I'd ever been kissed before.

"She started slow, with just her lips, but so quickly I felt her tongue inside my mouth. I was shaking, I was moaning, I felt like I was going to die. I was so sure I was going to explode right there on the spot and lose my chance to get inside this beautiful girl. But I think she must have sensed how urgent the situation was, because wordlessly she pulled away, and helped me step out of the tub, and then still holding one hand, she led me out of the bathroom and down the dark hallway to her bedroom.

"Inside her bedroom she laid me down on her bed. I could still hear the rain beating on the window pane. It was dark, but I could see her, just barely, in the candlelight that bled down the hallway from the bathroom. She stood over me for a moment, looking me up and down, and at last I did not feel nervous, I did not feel shy. For some strange reason she wanted this scrawny little American boy and all I could think was that at this moment in time, there was no luckier guy in all the world.

"She smiled at me, and reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, let it fall away... and I was not disappointed. She was exactly as I had imagined her. And then she slipped down her panties, keeping her eyes on mine the whole time, and she straddled me on the bed, still looking at me, but she never said a word."

Grandpa Gordo stopped, and I could see his heart beating through his shirt. He took a few deep breaths, his eyes still closed, and when he spoke again, it was in the quietest voice I had ever heard him use.

"It happened way too fast the first time. I still remember exactly what it felt like. I can still see her breasts above my face, as she leaned into me, and came down on me, so warm and so wet…and she sort of gasped at first, but then she whispered, 'Touch me' and I knew exactly what she meant. Hers breasts were the kind that needed to be touched. But I was in shock, immobilized, so she had to say it again, 'Touch me, Daveed, touch me!' And I knew as soon as I did it was all going to happen, for me and for her, and it did. She moaned and threw her hair forward as she gyrated her hips over mine, and I squeezed her breasts and I lost it all, all at once, way too fast."

Grandpa stopped and laughed a little, a sad laugh as he covered his hands with his face. Then he went on.

"It didn't matter, though, because…I stayed with her that whole night, and we made love more times than I could count. As soon as I was ready, we would do it again, and when I wasn't ready, she showed me things I could do for her, things that made her wild, things that only required my hands…and my mouth…and other body parts you wouldn't usually think of using…"

Now when he laughed it was not so sad. He smiled at some incredible memory. "And eventually we did get up out of bed, and we went downstairs into the kitchen and finally ate that spaghetti. It was a little cold, but it was the best godamn spaghetti I've ever had in my life. And after we'd eaten and cleared the table, Gina got a glint in her eye and a smile on her lips, and she laid me out on her kitchen table and I was her dessert. And then she laid down, and she was dessert for me. And then we went back up to her room and did more stuff than I can even remember. All night long, my head was spinning, I didn't even know who I was anymore.

"Some time in the middle of the night the rain stopped, and the moon came out. And some time after that Gina and I collapsed in exhaustion, and fell asleep in each other's arms. I never wanted that night to end, though as magical as it was, there was a sadness to it, because we both knew that in the morning we were going to have to say goodbye, and we would probably never see each other again.

"She had set her alarm clock, but I woke up at dawn and I wrapped myself around her body and I found myself crying. And she woke up too, and wrapped herself around me, and we made love one more time, both of us crying…"

And that's when I saw the tears in Grandpa Gordo's eyes, the tears that ran down his laugh lines, on to his cheeks and finally got absorbed into the dryness of his old skin. He cried a few of those tears, scrunched up his eyes, then covered his face with his hands again and a moment later he was laughing, but again it was that sad kind of laugh. "Oh, shit…" he said. "Look at me…"

I still could not speak. Even if I could have found my voice, I would have had no idea what to say. All I could do was wait for him, wait for him to travel forward in time sixty years, to put a little distance between who he was now and the memory of himself as that boy whose heart was captured and broken all in the space of one magical week in Rome, so many years ago.

I saw him open his eyes at last, and somehow focus on the world around him, and then he looked across at me and smiled.

"We rode her bike back to the hotel in the morning" he said. " I stood up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist and felt the heaviness of my heart collapsing against her. My clothes were still filthy, so I'd left them behind. I wore her sister's pants, and another shirt, this one without a band or a saying. I never found out how Gina explained to her sister why some of her clothes were missing.

"And what did she do with my clothes? I like to think she washed them and folded them up in the bottom of her drawer and took them out every now and then to sniff them, and look at them, and remember me. I like to think she took my clothes with her to NYU, but I don't know if she did.

"We stopped on the side of the road and exchanged addresses before we reached the hotel and promised to write to each other. We knew that once we got to the hotel, there was a good chance all hell was going to break loose, so we said out goodbyes a few blocks away, and I left her there, and walked in the rest of the way on my own.

"As expected, I was in a shitload of trouble the moment I got back to the hotel. I guess they'd spent half the night looking for me, and the Ungerbunger was all over me, and even Lizzie looked like she'd been crying, wondering what could have happened to me. Everybody was packing up to go home, though, so there wasn't a whole lot of time to chastise me for staying out all night. We packed up and we left.

"On the plane ride home, once again I sat with Lizzie, and she kept looking at me all concerned, and asking me what had happened. She kept asking me where I'd gotten those clothes I came in with and she kept saying I looked different. I don't know if I did, but I did know I wasn't going to tell anybody about my night with Gina, especially not Lizzie. It was something special, something private, it was mine.

"On the plane ride home, after Lizzie started to let up on me a little bit, she told me she'd had another dream. She said in the dream she and I were on the rooftop of the hotel and she kissed me. She told me this, then she looked at me, a long time, like she was waiting for a response.

"And it was funny, because I knew that a week ago, my heart would have been all aflutter, but now…now I was just too…I was all jumbled inside on account of Gina. Lizzie seemed to want something from me, some confirmation of my feelings for her, but I couldn't give it. Not now. I wasn't sure anymore how I felt about her, or about anything.

"So I ignored her pleading eyes as best I could, and instead I asked her if she and Kate and Ethan had ever found Paolo and Isabella. She said no, but that they'd had a lot of fun looking. Then she started to tell me all about the wonderful adventures they'd had wandering all over Rome looking for Paolo and Isabella, and it made her forget all about the imaginary kiss on the rooftop.

"So while she babbled on and on, I just nodded my head and said, 'Uh-hu,' and 'Oh, really?' and 'Wow!' and in this way I was able to free my own mind to travel back to the memory of my own very real kiss in the bathtub, and everything that had happened after that. I had so much to sort out, and it really wasn't about Lizzie. For the first time in a long time, it wasn't all about Lizzie. And strangely, that felt good.

"As it turned out, the Unger woman didn't want to get the reputation of being a bad chaperone, so somehow, conveniently, my parents never even found out that I had spent my last night in Rome somewhere other than the hotel. And a good thing, too, because they would have badgered the hell out of me. You know my parents were both psychiatrists, don't you? And as psychiatrists, they would have made the assumption that I had experienced some traumatic life-altering event by being torn away from the safety of the pack at such a tender age and in such a foreign environment, and they would have done everything they could to get me to talk about it, to work out my anxieties about my experiences.

"But I had no anxieties. Well, only one. It did occur to me at some point that perhaps I could have made Gina pregnant, but in the letters that followed that summer and into the fall, when she first arrived at NYU, there was no mention of any such thing, so I began to feel better about that and totally enjoyed the memory of the time we'd spent together.

"Yeah, we exchanged letters for a while, but after that I'm sure she got really busy with school and everything, and somehow we lost touch. I'm sure she found an American boyfriend almost right away, at least one, if not more. In the long run, I don't really know what happened to Gina, but I like to think she did okay."

I was still staring at my Grandpa Gordo and still, I think, with my mouth hanging open. But at last I had found my voice again, at least enough to utter a single stunned, "Grandpa…"

Then he grinned and laughed. "I know. I know. Now you'll never be able to look at me the same way again, will you? We've always been pals, Dave, and that's been great, but I'm glad I told you all this, even though I'm sure it changes things between us."

"Only for the better," I said. "I know we've always been pals, Grandpa, but I've also always been somewhat in awe of you, I mean the incredible life you've lead, your creative spirit and all. To me, you've always been a little larger than life. But hearing this story now, it just makes you more…more human…"

Grandpa smiled. "I'm nothing, Dave, if not human."

We looked at each other, and it was so evident that everything between us had changed. But Grandpa had not changed. I saw a sparkle in his eyes, and the sides of his mouth curled up in an even bigger grin as he quipped, "But really, Dave. I would think hearing something like this would put you more in awe of me, not less."

"Why is that?" I wondered.

"Skinny fourteen year old kid…bags this beautiful Italian babe…I must have had something going on to make her want me so much." He was almost laughing as he said it.

"Grandpa, you're incredible. Do you know that?"

"I do, Davey. I surely do. But so are you. And I hope you know it too."

"What's the saying?" I asked. "Chip off the old block?"

"No, I think the saying is 'The _nut _doesn't fall far from the tree,'" he winked.

"And I come from a good tree," I said, standing up. "You think it's time to be heading back? We've sat here a long time."

Grandpa stood up slowly, stretching his old muscles.

"Did you want to go across the street to the hotel?" I remembered. "Did you want to check out if those gardens are still there?"

Grandpa Gordo gazed across the street, then slowly shook his head. "Nah. I don't need to. Maybe it's better if I don't. Besides," he added, tapping his head, "it's all up here." Then he put a hand to his chest, adding, "And it's all in here."

I nodded. Smart man, my Grandpa Gordo.

"And anyway," he added as we began to walk down the street, "I'm starting to feel like I've left your Grandma on her own a little too long now. I've suddenly got the hankering to give her a big, mushy kiss."

"Grandpa!"

Grandpa Gordo laughed again as he put his arm over my shoulder and we stepped out of the shadow of his past and back into the full light of the present day.


End file.
